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Review – WHAT’S YOUR JOB DADDY? (“Fils de,” HPG, 2014, France)

Hervé-Pierre Gustave, also known as HPG, is a veteran French porn actor and director, known as an innovator of the gonzo subgenre. This is a style of pornography that attempts to place the viewers directly into the scene, for instance, through POV shots. A similar style is employed in his film What’s Your Job Daddy? HPG’s half-fictionalized account of his unusual life, balancing his life as a pornographer and his role as a family man, is quite possibly shot with the same equipment he uses for his porn and attempts to place the viewers directly into his world by being dominated by, and manipulated through, his point of view. However, whether or not HGP is able to achieve an honest portrayal of his life is debatable. He seems far too eccentric. The press-kit of the film reads that with this film HPG felt the need to “turn my camera on his children rather than creating a fictional universe,” which certainly encourages such skepticism. While it is true that this film offers more an insight on his own personal universe than a more general one on a concealed dimension of the world of pornography, his children are more like marginal characters than the protagonists of the movie.

On the other hand, What’s Your Job Daddy? works well as a film about a guy who spends most of his time complaining about the sacrifices he has had to make by starting a family, whether it is by talking about his past days as a wild man or by complaining about giving up masturbating to tranny pornography for fear of getting caught by his wife. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Gwen has understandably given him an ultimatum: he may either continue his career as a pornographer or take responsibility and become a normal dad. Though the film shows HPG on vulnerable occasions, most notably in the moments when he is unable to get erect during a shoot, it also reveals him as a creepy flirt, a whiny megalomaniac, and an immature man-child. He epitomizes the patriarchal system, unwilling to make sacrifices and take responsibility while nurturing a sense of entitlement and imposing, nay enforcing, patriarchal rule.

Despite this, Gwen agrees with him at the end of the movie, as they push a stroller holding their little children, agreeing with each other that they will always be together because nothing will ever change. Quite a haunting and obnoxious final message. But who is the loser in the end? – ★★

I love how you contrast this filmmaker’s (noble or neutral sounding) vision and how the film fails in his purpose. I enjoyed your description of the different messages his film actually sends- that he is whiny, patriarchally selfish and his children
are only marginal characters.